Microsoft calls UPnP victor in home connectivity battle

Microsoft calls UPnP victor in home connectivity battle
MANHASSET, N.Y. — Claiming victory in the battle to define a consumer connectivity protocol, Microsoft Corp. said the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology it helped define is sweeping away competing alternatives proposed by Sony Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. The first certified UPnP products will appear Wednesday (Nov 28) and a wide variety more are being defined and tested, a Microsoft official said.

The Consumer Electronics Association quietly endorsed UPnP in July as the preferred method for linking home electronics systems, said Mark Lee, co-chairman of the UPnP Forum's marketing group and a product manager for connectivity products at Microsoft. The software-based UPnP approach allows digital consumer devices to identify themselves and interoperate with each other over a variety of in-home networks. The technology was originally defined by Microsoft, which supports it in Windows XP and the forthcoming Windows CE 4.0 operating system.

"The CEA adopted UPnP as the device discovery and control protocol of choice for all AV systems in July of this year. That has provided us significant momentum," said Lee.

Lead UPnP rivals include Home Audio/Video Interoperability (HAVi), spearheaded by Sony along with Philips Electronics and a number of top Japanese consumer electronics companies. Separately, Sun rolled out with much fanfare its Java-based Jini technology in early 1999, aimed at enabling devices and services to identify themselves and interoperate over a network. Sony, Philips, Toshiba, Quantum and Seagate said they supported the technology at the time of the rollout.

"HAVi has been encumbered by intellectual property and royalty issues, including a per-unit royalty for systems that use it," said Lee. "Organizations who looked at HAVi and UPnP made a clear choice for UPnP. As for Jini, I don't think it's taking hold in a significant way with the vendors we talk to."

"I just know people have stopped supporting HAVi, and Sun joined the UPnP Forum this time last year," said Andrew Li, marketing co-chairman for the UPnP Forum and a business development manager at Intel Corp.'s corporate R&D labs.

Sony and Sun were not immediately available for comment.

Intel Corp. on Wednesday will launch the Anyport Internet Gateway 1300, the first home Internet gateway device certified as compliant with UPnP. The product links Ethernet and 802.11b nets and should ship within three months. Similar products are expected shortly from Arescom, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, Virata and others.

Golden gateways

Backers claim UPnP will enable gateways that bridge broadband Internet links and allow various home devices and networks to support peer-to-peer connections for such applications as voice-over-IP, videoconferencing and multiplayer gaming over the Web. Those apps cannot be supported by current gateway products that follow the existing Network Address Translation standard established by the Internet Engineering Task Force, the backers said.

"The problems UPnP solves for the Internet Gateway are so significant that any gateway that does not use UPnP will rapidly become obsolete," said Intel's Li.

"You will not have a competitive offering next year if you do not have UPnP support for your Internet gateway," added Microsoft's Lee.

The Internet gateway is just the first of many device types the UPnP Forum is defining. At a UPnP developers conference to be held this Thursday and Friday at Microsoft's facilities in Redmond, Wash., Hewlett-Packard Co. will demonstrate a UPnP printer, Philips will show a Internet "boom box" that uses UPnP, and Sony will demo a UPnP-based service that acts as a music database for a digital audio storage device.

The UPnP Forum has working groups defining a number of UPnP device types, including printers, digital audio players, other AV gear, security cameras, digital picture frames and other home automation and imaging devices.

"I would expect home automation, AV and printing/imaging device types — at least two if not all three of these — would be defined in the first quarter of next year," said Lee. "By Christmas of next year I would expect to see home automation, AV and printing/imaging products on the market enabled by UPnP, and most home gateways will be using UPnP," he said.

Intel is developing a security scheme to overlay UPnP that it will discuss at this week's conference. The meeting will also take up the issue of how UPnP can be linked into emerging Web service architectures like Microsoft's .Net to automate operations between modular applications over the Internet.

Compliance checker

The UPnP Forum this week created a non-profit company called UPnP Implementers Corp. which is responsible for certifying compliance with UPnP standards and use of the UPnP logo. The Forum itself defines specific sets of commands and features that different kinds of devices must support to be compliant with the group's standards.

The work loosely mirrors a process Microsoft uses for Windows-compliant products. The company publishes guidelines for various Windows-ready PCs, notebooks and peripheral devices and runs a test service that judges compliance with its minimum specs, and oversees which devices are awarded Windows-ready logos — coveted by computer and peripheral makers.

Lee said the UPnP technology — based primarily on existing Internet standards such as TCP/IP and XML — is completely open and does not represent any Windows-specific technology or lock-in. "This technology can run on any operating system. There are tool kits available for using this on Linux and various embedded operating systems. It's not a Microsoft-only or a PC-centric thing," Lee said. "A lot of work has gone into this with companies like Intel, Philips, Thomson, Canon and HP involved," he said.

Microsoft will make no direct revenues on UPnP. "We've made the technology fully available to the Forum, including all the technology and the rights associated with it," Lee said.

Nevertheless, no operating systems other than Windows currently support UPnP natively, which puts the Apple MAC OS, existing versions of Linux and real-time OSes out of the loop. "Clearly Microsoft is making a technology bet here with support of UPnP in Windows ME, Windows XP and Windows CE 4.0. And we are interested in the PC taking a more impact-full role in people's lives. But there's no lock-in here," said Lee.

Microsoft expects Windows XP will soon get certification as being compliant with UPnP. The OS has special capabilities as a UPnP control device, and it has a built-in software Internet gateway. However, UPnP devices will not require connections to a Windows PC to work together.

"UPnP is not Windows-centric," said Intel's Li. "We developed our gateway device on Linux and there are UPnP tool kits for various OSes and chip sets. People have implemented UPnP in Java and using their own proprietary internal software."

The UPnP Forum was formed in June 1999 and currently has about 400 members. It ratified the UPnP standard in June of last year.

Companies that wish to use the UPnP certification mark with their products can become members of the UPnP Implementers Corp. by completing a membership application, paying annual dues of $5,000, and completing the certification process.